A partial playlist, actually. Here are five, funny, award-winning radio commercials, a few representative samples of literally thousands written and produced by Paul & Walt Worldwide. Enjoy.

“Laugh Catalog” | Funny Radio Commercial for George Schlatter’s Comedy Club

Our first Clio Award winner, for Best Use of Sound. Winner of LOTS more awards, too. Created for our good friend and long-time client Mike Mischler and King World, for the brand new and short-lived syndicated show, “George Schlatter’s Comedy Club.”Written by Paul Fey & Walt Jaschek. Produced and Directed by Paul Fey, Engineered by Bill Schulenburg. VO Talent: Peter Jones, Steve Susskind, Bobbi Block, Susan Tolsky, Bill Martin. FUN FACTS: Paul was a huge fan of the BBC Radio production of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and hunted down Peter Jones, the voice of “The Book” in that legendary series. Via a 3am telephone session from Paul’s hotel room at the Mondrian, he directed Peter in a London studio. Our “laughers” were chosen from dozens and dozens of auditions submitted by multiple LA talent agencies.

“Missing Persons” | Funny radio commercial for WCBS-TV and Matlock

One of our biggest award winners from the early 90’s. Created for WCBS-TV, and our great client and friend, David LaFountaine. Written by Walt Jaschek, Produced and directed by Paul Fey. VO Talent: Harvey Atkin, Tom Poston, Orson Bean. FUN FACT: Despite the great rhythm of this dialogue, none of the talent read with each other. Tom Poston missed the session due to a golf date with the king of Morocco (no kidding!) — and we had to record him separately and edit the dialogue together later. Harvey Atkin was recorded remotely from a studio in Toronto… and Orson Bean as the VO was recorded later in Hollywood.

“Robert Goulet” | Funny radio commercial for The Simpsons

One of our biggest award winners, including the $20,000 Radio Mercury Award for Best Comedy Spot in 1995. Created for our good friend and client, David LaFountaine at Twentieth Television, and the huge syndicated launch of The Simpsons. Writer: Walt Jaschek. Producer/Director: Paul Fey. VO Talent: Christina Belford, Robert Goulet. FUN FACTS: Walt originally wrote a script based on the idea of using the voice of James Earl Jones reading Bart Simpson’s blackboard writings. When it appeared James Earl Jones would be too expensive, Paul began exploring alternative celebrity voice ideas (including Kelsey Grammer, among others) — and finally, with the help of Elaine Craig Voice Casting, hit upon and made a deal with Robert Goulet. The rough production script included a list of dozens of Bart’s blackboard writings. Paul’s plans were to record all the lines, and decide later which ones worked best. He directed Robert Goulet over the phone from a studio in Las Vegas, where Goulet was performing at the time. Surprisingly, after many hours of postproduction, the spot simply wasn’t working — and was shaping up to be an expensive disaster. After dozens of unsuccessful edit attempts to make it sound funny… Paul tried adding various music tracks, which started improving the spot rapidly. The order of Goulet’s lines were ultimately completely swapped around to fit the final, classical track — which ultimately sounded as though it had been written for the spot.

“The Ballad of Judge Wapner” | Funny radio commercial for King World and The People’s Court

One of our biggest award winners from the early 90’s. Written by Walt Jaschek, produced and directed by Paul Fey, with music production by Matthews Griffith Music. VO Talent: Lance LeGault, Gene McGarr. FUN FACT: While we always enjoyed working with the late Lance LeGault, and loved his deep, western voice… we didn’t find out until the session that he had no sense of rhythm. His performance here was created with literally dozens of edits — practically every word and phrase was moved to fit the rhythm.

The St. Louis Media History Foundation inducted 20 other individuals into the St. Louis Media Hall of Fame that night, as well. More than 200 people attended a downtown gala at which the honors were bestowed. (The full list of the St. Louis Media Hall of Fame “Class of 2017” is below.)

Individually and together, Paul and Walt have reputations for creating high-impact, industry-admired advertising campaigns. They teamed up in 1991 to create Paul & Walt Worldwide, the radio commercial boutique agency and production company, and their work quickly won CLIOS, ADDYs and many other awards for national brands. Paul served as Paul & Walt Worldwide President; Walt served as Executive Creative Director. The agency had offices in Hollywood, California and St. Louis. Here they are in front of just a few of their industry awards.

Paul is now President and Chief Creative Officer of World Wide Wadio in Hollywood. Walt is now writing comedy and comics at Walt Now Entertainment. Both men are St. Louis natives and continue to collaborate frequently.

Line-up included George Noory, other legendary broadcasters, reporters, documentarians

ST. LOUIS, March 20, 2018 – Twenty-two legendary news reporters, editors, photographers, broadcasters, ground-breaking filmmakers, and shapers of public opinion were among the inductees into the St. Louis Media Hall of Fame on Saturday, March 17. The inductions took place at a gala at St. Louis City Center Hotel in downtown St. Louis before 200 friends and family members of the inductees, who were presented with framed induction certificates. They were selected for their significant contributions to print, broadcast and digital media, advertising, and public relations by the St. Louis Media History Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization that researches, collects, and archives regional media-related histories, artifacts and memorabilia.

Among the new inductees was longtime St. Louisan George Noory, host of Premiere Network’s Coast To Coast AM, who was recognized for transforming his late-night radio talk show into an entertainment powerhouse for millions of Americans.

Other inductees were:

Dave Dorr: Veteran St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports writer (1966-2001)

Paul Fey and Walt Jaschek: Founders of Paul & Walt Worldwide, for their highly creative radio ads for CBS-TV, NBC, Comedy Central, and many other national broadcast and entertainment clients.

J.B. Forbes: Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for more than 42 years.

Tripp Frohlichstein: A former KMOV-TV news editor and founder of MediaMasters.*

Henry Hampton: Acclaimed filmmaker, who produced “Eyes on the Prize” for PBS and 80+ documentaries.*

Mary Lou Hess: The first female president of the Advertising Club of St. Louis.*

Cleora Hughes: The first African-American woman editor of an Entertainment section at the Post-Dispatch.

Bob Joiner: Veteran reporter for the St. Louis American, Post-Dispatch, and St. Louis Public Radio.

George “The G” Logan: A legendary Black radio DJ in the mid-1950s on KXLW, “The G” ushered in what would become “rock and roll radio” in St. Louis and across the country.*

Bill Miller Sr.: Reporter, editor and publisher of the Washington Missourian over 65 years, noted for fair and accurate reporting, and mixing country journalism with tough editorial stances on local and regional issues.

Rob & Sally Rains: Long time sports reporters and authors or co-authors of a combined 41 books, they moved into the digital world with StLSportsPage.com in 2011.

John Rawlings: A longtime sports writer and editor, Rawlings was a driving force in helping Major League Baseball and The Sporting News develop news portals and team websites in the early days of the Internet.

Brother George Rueppel, SJ: Founder of radio station WEW in 1921 with many “firsts” in radio.*

James Roy Stockton: Legendary Post-Dispatch writer who covered St. Louis Cardinals baseball for 43 years, hosted a sports radio show for 15 years, and was part of the first telecast of a baseball game in St. Louis.*

Susan Veidt: Helped lead Fleishman-Hillard as it grew to become the world’s largest and most successful public relations agency.

Al Wiman: Award-winning TV medical and science reporter for 29 years, mostly in St. Louis, Wiman is known for his innovative medical series that prompted viewers to take better care of themselves.

(* – Inducted posthumously) The St. Louis Media History Foundation accepts tax-deductible contributions to develop and expand its collection of regional St. Louis media artifacts, its website, oral histories, local archives, and repositories. It also offers exhibits at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, 3524 Russell Blvd., in St. Louis. For more information, visit the Foundation’s Facebook pages or its website, www.stlmediahistory.com.

Paul & Walt ad agency lands slew of awards for “Simpsons” commercials

Warning: Do not drink coffee in your car while listening to the radio in the morning. If Paul & Walt Worldwide ad for “The Simpsons” comes on, you might spit steaming java all over the dashboard.

The Hollywood-based advertising agency has won a suitcase full of awards for its radio campaign promoting the Fox-TV animated series “The Simpsons,” including the $20,000 Gold Award for Huor at the recent Radio Mercury Awards held in New York City.

In case you haven’t heard it, the ad features Robert Goulet reading from “The Writings of Bart,” which are the blackboard writings by Bart Simpson seen in the opening sequence of each episode. Over a background of classical music, Goulet’s dulcet voice recites such Bartisms as, “I will not Xerox my butt” and “I will not eat things for money.”

Paul & Walt was founded by Paul Fey, who added Walt Jaschek as a partner in 1991. Fey says he went into the niche of radio ads because most ad agencies were ignoring it, and the business was being controlled by a handful of old-fashioned firms.

“We kind of bill ourselves as the next generation of great radio,” says Fey, 39. “We give it a perspective that’s 20 years younger.”

The word about Paul & Walt is apparently getting out: the company has doubled in size in the last two years and is moving out of its old downtown L.A. office into a larger facility that includes two-state-of-the-art recording studios, Fey says.

Paul & Walt Worldwide Converting Ears to Eyes

A Southern California ad agency with the unlikely name of Paul & Walt Worldwide created a “huge radio extravaganza” recently, included appearances by the Temptations, Candice Bergen, Connie Chung and the stars of Designing Women to help client CBS-TV score a major upset, winning its first Fall Sweeps ratings victory in Southern California in six years.

The radio “theatre of the mind” – which recently won a SUNNY for best television promotion – featured a cast of thousands and two CBS-TV sportscasters describing the action with Connie Chung playing the saxophone and the Temptations executing simultaneous backflips. The spots also featured the stars of Designing Women in a dazzling exhibition of synchronized swimming.

“This was a perfect opportunity,” says partner Paul Fey, “to make a major effort on radio and use the medium for what it does so well: utilize the listeners’ imaginations.

CBS-TV made a major commitment to win the Fall premiere week and sweeps battle with new programming and promotion after finishing poorly for several years. The company made the biggest radio campaign in history as part of the massive, multi-media drive.

To tie in with the television campaign, CBS-Tv saturated Southern California radio over Labor Day weekend. Paul & Walt produced eight related radio spots built around a fictional event: the “CBS Get Ready Weekend.”

The agency’s two principals, Paul Fey and Walt Jaschek, had separate, successful ad careers prior to joining forces as Paul & Walt Worldwide. Fey began his career at CBS-owned KMOX-TV, St, Louis, creating radio for the station’s audience promotion efforts. Jaschek was simultaneously working as Creative Director for a Colorado ad agency. By 1982 they were each winning national awards. Since then, they’ve won more than 300.

“Walt and I met in 1974 in college when we were both journalism majors and worked on the college newspaper together,: says Walt Jaschek. “Paul used to collect Dick Orkin and Alan Barzman radio spots, and I would ask him, ‘When are we going to great stuff like that?'”

When Paul Fey was writing and producing alone, he was getting job offers from CBS stations who were aware of his work for KMOX. “I didn’t really want to do the same thing in L.A. or New York,” he says. “I really wanted to hold out just enough, to go into business for myself and work for all them. I did that in 1985, and within a few months I was a one-man shop, writing and producing and doing most of my work in Los Angeles. The business was growing fast and needed some help.”

Fey’s school chum Walt, having moved back to St. Louis to become an advertising manager for Southwestern Bell, eventually realized his goal of free-lancing.

The two joined forces fives years ago when Paul got a huge assignment. Since that time Walt has become the full-time writer and Paul participates in concept work and takes care of the business and production end.

In addition to CBS-TV, the agency does creative work for King Word (distributors of “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy”,) Warner Bros. and Anheuser-Busch.

“We love working in radio,” says partner Jaschek. “It lets us supply endless visuals and the listener completes the pictures we create.”

“The only downside to doing radio,” adds Fey, “is that you can’t convince the client that the radio spot has to be done on location in Hawaii like you can with a TV spot.”

Paul Fey got a tape recorder from his grandfather on his twelfth birthday. The first thing he recorded was the musical open for a brand new CBS comedy called Good Morning World off the family TV. The next thing he recorded was a series of comic parodies of popular TV commercials that he wrote and performed.

Now, 25 years later, he and his partner Walt Jaschek make funny radio commercials. And one of their biggest clients in none other than CBS Television, for whom Paul & Walt Worldwide create award-winning spots to promote CBS comedies.

A fan of funny commercials and audio humor throughout his life, Paul spent, in his own words, “way too many hours in my formative years” watching TV and listening to comedy albums. Throughout grade school and junior high school, he continued to experiment with creating his own funny programs and commercials on tape.

By the 1970s, in high school, he was listening to Woody Allen and Monty Python and also became aware of Dic & Bert, who were winning CLIO Awards by making the best funny radio commercials of that time. Intrigued, he sent a minor goal: among whatever else he was to achieve, to someday win a CLIO.

Haven chosen advertising as a career path, Paul was a pre-journalism major at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he became fast friends with Walt Jaschek, an “incredibly talented and energetic writer,” who always seemed to be working on a dozen exciting projects. Deciding to specifically pursue broadcast advertising rather than print, Paul moved his studies to Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville, where he graduated first in his class with a B.A. in Television/Radio.

Through the university, he landed an internship and, within two days, a job as a writer-producer-account executive and media buyer for a small advertising agency in St. Louis. Within a week, he was named Vice-President of the agency, and began producing and buying the nation media for a funny radio campaign for The Athlete’s Foot apparel chain, as well as one for Nike.

Finally given the chance to do it for real, he became hooked on creating funny radio commercials. His only frustration was that in this, and a subsequent job with a medium-sized St. Louis agency, the opportunity to work on these spots didn’t come along often enough. When a job was offered to him at KMOC-TV, the CBS-owned television stations in St. Louis, Paul had never even heard of broadcast promotion. Upon learning he would have the opportunity to work for CBS and write and produce dozens of TV and radio spots every month, he jumped at the chance. Creating literally hundreds of spots over the next few years, he began winning local, national and international advertising awards for his work.

Turning down job offers to take his same position in New York and Lose Angeles, he worked toward a larger goal: going into business for himself. In 1985, he left KMOX-TV to form Paul Fey Creative Services, based in St. Louis. Within a year, he secured all five CBS-owned television stations as his clients.

In mid-1987, Paul Fey Creative Services moved to Hollywood. Business exploded quickly and he called on his old friend Walt to help with the writing. Over the next year, as the business grew and the workload continued to increase, Walt left his job as Creative Director of a St. Lous agency and began writing full-time.

In 1988, Paul Fey and Walt Jaschek were awarded their first CLIO for “Best Used of Sound.” A few years and hundreds of awards later, they formalized their partnership, operating as Paul & Walt Worldwide.

Paul & Walt Worldwide, now World Wide Wadio, is an innovative radio production company headquartered in Hollywood, California, and has become one of the preeminent suppliers of creative radio in the country. Their clients include the CBS Television Network, Twentieth Television, Warner Bros. Television, King World, Bud Light, Budweiser Ice Draft, Michelob Golden, FTD Florists, Cadillac, Lincoln Mercury, GM Parts and Southwestern Bell.

Behind Radio’s Zany Commercials

It has been said that a radio station is only as good as its commercials. That axiom has served Paul Fey and Walt Jaschek well.

Widely acclaimed for their sharp sense of humor, the team is nationally recognized as the creative genius behind a number of radio spots promoting the seasonal lineup of shows for TV networks.

Their client list includes King World, Warner Brothers Television, 20th Century Television and CBS Television Network.

“If a commercial is boring and doesn’t hold their attention, we can’t blame them if they reach up and hit the button on the car radio,” said Paul Fey, founding partner of Paul & Walt Worldwide. “We want to stop them in their tracks.”

Fey and Jaschek have been on the laugh track since high school, winning some 400 awards for excellence in commercial production, including three Clios and two regional Emmys. The team walked award with the five Ollies in one evening, setting a record for the most awards won by one company in the Hollywood Radio & Television Society’s annual presentation.

One Ollie was presented for a Paul & Walt commercial, “Auditions,” in which Patrick Stewart is among the voices trying out for the part of Jean Luc Picard in “Star Trek.”

Of all the awards (which stream in at a rate of 50 a year), Fey is most partial to the team’s first Clio. Fey aspired to win a Clio since his high school years, and recalls vividly the magic feeling of creating the spot.

It was a radio ad featuring a “catalog” of types of laughter. “The whole spot was kind of invented on Walt’s front porch. It just sort of came out… It wrote itself,” he said.

What keeps this team on the leading edge? “We never want to get satisfied with doing the same thing,” Fey said, pointing out that too many comedy teams rely on formulaic humor.

“Once upon a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, funny dialogue radio spots were what broke through the clutter. Now, I feel that funny dialogue spots are becoming the clutter, because there is so much of it out there,” Fey said.

Radio in particular lends itself to production-oriented spots, where a hybrid of audio effects, humor and dialogue work together. “It’s much easier to do a gigantic-scale production on radio because a lot of it is letting people’s minds fill it in,” he said.

A recent Paul & Walt commercial for a cellular telephone carrier, for example, camped up the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” with a polka beat accompanied by amusing dialogue, delivered in a deadpan voice:

“I get around, so I signed up for voice mail. I used to leery about sending voice mail. I wasn’t sure if I was putting enough stamps on it.”

As the music cut in and out abruptly, the deadpan voice again speaks up:

“Voice mail is easy. Think of it as rolling up a yellow sticky-note, jamming it into your cellular phone, and having it pop out somewhere else.”

Life begins for a Paul & Walt spot with an idea, either dreamed up by Fey, the production genius of the team, or Jaschek, the primary writer. Fey works from the Paul & Walt Worldwide office in Los Angeles, while Jaschek works from his office in St. Louis, the city where they both grew up.

They communicate through faxes and computer modems to tighten ideas, copy and production of radio ads.

The spot takes life in the imagination long before it is committed to tape. “It’s no exaggeration for me to say that I know exactly what a spot sounds like before it’s recorded,” Fey said. “The key is trying to put on tape what’s in my head.”

Paul & Walt fleshes out the characters, relying on a pool of creative talent from an audio studio in the same building as its Los Angeles office.

“People get accustomed to thinking of radio in a certain way,” said Fey, who claims the company owes its success to breaking those conventions. The plan for the future is to continue carving out new niches in radio commercials.

Paul & Walt Worldwide is now working on a project that Fey hopes will set a new milestone in how people perceive radio. He was mum about who the client is and the product, saying only that he is not bound to the conventions of 30 or 60 seconds for the spots.

“We’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do with radio,” he said.